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Jim,
OK, I understand about the loop. I seem to recall there was once some mention of extending it further as with the original pre-war loop and wondered whether that was something you had heard more about.
I don't think the Sunday market site would be affected nor the existing airport parking in terms of revenue generation potential, depending on the lease terms.
However it may be that the parking is a separate deal and the running of the Sunday Market had been taken back in house by DVLL about a year ago. Whether this explained the seemingly much reduced area of retailers in recent times, as viewed from inside the circuit, I don't know. There may be other factors that simply made it look less full.
The odd thing about the earth works along the straight is that it i, approximately, the same height as the previous spectator banking/MotoX track high point but much wider and flat on top. Plus higher at the esses end of course. It would be very high compared the rest of the circuit. At the Coppice corner end I would have thought a 3 storey building would have been right on the limits of the height controls related to the airport systems even at the original level. I seems to recall one of the plans showed the line. However the marker osts for the minor Hairpin re-alignment suggested that the elevation there would not change much - so the end of the fast straight would be a downhill into the hairpin perhaps even more than it is now.
In turn that would have made the 'new' club circuit Esses quite different, one way or another by making a steepish drop into the first part and then again into the second.
Still, it's all conjecture now.
p261brm,
As they stand the earthworks I referred to are just a pile of earth where there was a different shaped pile of earth. And the MotoX track gone ... It's no big deal.
As far as I could see there are a dozen or so 6 to 8 ft wide strips of tarmac removed, seemingly related to piping for improved restroom facilities, and all between McLeans and round the loop to Goddards. The tyre walls have been moved out. The inside armco has been removed from near the new tunnel around to the Fogarty Esses. The new tunnel, of course, needs finishing off, presumably slightly differently to how it was intended to be finished as part of the new development of the pit lane entrance.
Some of the infield inside Coppice has been dug out ready for the pits development but only up to the fence line.
It looks to me more like a low cost attempt to make it look like things were progressing in order to attract investors rather than wholesale unmitigated vandalism. But I could be wrong.
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